I don't think I've written much about this before, but I think it's always interesting to talk about all of the nitty gritty logistics that you have to deal with in order to go through fertility treatments. I've been lucky enough to fall into a routine in the past year or so, so I haven't thought much about it, but lately my local clinic where I do all of my monitoring (but not where my doctor is) has been doing a bunch of shuffling around, plus my extremely upsetting experience in America has brought it to the forefront of my mind. This is nothing earthshattering, just lots of new food for thought.
My usual routine is to go to my health insurance's clinic closest to my house for monitoring. Much less stressful than driving 45 minutes every time to Jerusalem (especially since I work from home a lot), plus I couldn't count on getting to the Jerusalem clinic in time for monitoring hours (7:30-8:30) if the earliest I can drop my daughter off at nursery school is 7 and then the traffic in the city is horrendous. So, local clinic it was, very simple I would fax my ultrasound results to the Jerusalem clinic nurses (they would check my blood results via computer) they would talk to the doctor and get back to me. Then when I moved on to IVF my doctor gave me his cell phone number, and every day I would check my blood results online and call him myself with the results. It all worked pretty smoothly.
Here's the catch, my local clinic is not one of the huge ones. I would have to get there for bloodwork by 7:45am in order to get same day results (they call them "urgent" tests), but then they couldn't get an u/s technician to come in until 8:30am! Most big clinics have the u/s start at 7:30 to coincide with the lab times. I've been using this clinic for over a year, and in this time I've discussed the issue with the secretaries as well as other patients and they always say that the issue has been brought up, letters have been written, calls have been made, but they can't get any technician to come earlier than 8:30. So I had resigned myself to this situation and sucked it up since at the end of the day it worked and only wasted 45 minutes of my day.
Lately, my health fund has done some reorganizing and moved the "womens' health center" a couple of streets away. They were smart enough to realize that all the women coming for the morning ultrasounds needed the lab as well so they kept the fertility ultrasounds at the old clinic, and miracle of miracles (after a little prodding of the new secretary) they were able to get a tech to start coming at 7:30. Hallelujah! Now the catch to this (why is there always a catch?) is they took the good u/s machine to the new clinic, we get the old crappy one, plus we used to have an awesome tech who really knew her stuff. The new tech is really young (she was training for a while with the old tech), but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt, she seems pretty good so far. The appointments just take longer now because the u/s machine is a bit of a dinosaur. It's never easy.
Plus, to add on to all of that, my blood tests which used to be no problem are starting to become a problem. When you need 2+ blood tests a week you don't want them to have trouble finding veins, and my veins are never easy, but for the past year or so the lab techs haven't had much trouble getting a vein. Well, a year of treatments, plus a 6 week pregnancy, seem to have packed on enough extra weight that my veins have disappeared again. Now, that's a serious reason to go on a diet. Oy.
Ok, one more question. When I went for my u/s in America, she made me put the u/s probe in myself! She said "put it in like a tampon". Now, I don't know about you, but this embarrassed me a hell of a lot more then when the tech just does it herself because it implies that there is something to be embarrassed about. Is it a liability? So that people don't think they are being violated? I mean isn't it implied that when a doctor does something it is necessary? You don't give yourself a pap smear? I found the whole thing very weird and offensive. Whatever, just wanted to bring that up.
The conclusion to this is that I had a scan this morning, lining is 7.5, one follicle of 13mm and one of 11mm on my right side. And I am blissfully coasting on my own self produced hormones for the first time in a while. My guess (from my 3 natural IUIs) is that I'll ovulate on Wednesday or Thursday, meaning transfer on Friday or Saturday? My hospital does Friday transfers but not Saturday transfers, so maybe my doctor will trigger me for timing purposes? I don't know. I trust my doctor blindly, which is nice for my anxiety, so it's up to him. Maybe I'll hold out until Sunday. I'm praying so hard for these last two embryos. I think they are ok quality, not awful but not as good as the previous ones, and we saw how well those all turned out.
